


Aftermath

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode Tag, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-22
Updated: 2007-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-11 23:16:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first shock of Rodney's words holds them all in fleeting stasis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath

The first shock of Rodney's words holds them all in fleeting stasis. No one moves save the medics helping Ronon to his feet, the nursing staff cleaning wounds and binding cuts. Stock still, John lets his mind flood with the responsibility he's just been handed – stares unseeing at the 'gate, feels the crunch of glass beneath other feet like a grinding pressure at the base of his spine.

 _Shit_.

Then he's back, stasis broken, and the orders come quickly – Ancient database; constellation searches; exploration logs that might transform an unfamiliar canopy of stars; scientists to search, test, and evaluate; anthropologists to plunder folk tales, legends, and lore; botanists –oxygen-producing plants in the greenhouses; what's the potential for – mess staff; rations; someone to clean up the major debris; could subspace communications be boosted to . . .

And Rodney's face is still bleeding.

Atlantis hums beneath John's feet, her adopted personnel scrambling to preserve her yet, and he looks around, sees Chuck's bandaged hand, someone (Small, Smith?) cleaning Teyla's cuts, everyone busy, Rodney typing, barking commands ("No, no there's – if we could just boost the . . . but we can't unless we can calibrate the – so get _on_ that, there has to be a way to find the baseline energy quotient for a . . .") to no one but himself.

John grabs at supplies with hands that feel clumsy after the grace of thought that lifted them to flight, and he steps up to the command console, pushes Rodney back into a listing chair. "Sit down."

"What?" Rodney looks at him as if he's lost his mind; more so when John stacks hydrogen peroxide and alcohol and antiseptic gel on his precious Ancient tech. "Hey – hey, not near the – "

"Shut up," John grits out, twisting the cap from the HP bottle, soaking thick wads of cotton. "Tip your head back."

"Are you feelng okay?" Rodney asks. "Did the star drive – did it – do you feel a lingering sense of . . . well, anything I suppose, but possession, perhaps? Top of the list."

"You're bleeding," John says, voice soft and low with the edge that means danger.

"Yes, well that's – OW. Jesus, what are you _using_ , carbolic acid?"

John wipes the cut beside Rodney's ear, the gash on his forehead, wets another wad of cotton to clean up his cheek. "Yeah, I am. And then I'm gonna shake a little salt in there, maybe finish off with a nice stream of pure alcohol . . . "

"Very funny," Rodney says, but his mouth's a tight line, and he's submitting to John's ministrations, even if he doesn't like them.

John works diligently, world reduced to the scrape of cotton over skin, the hiss of Rodney's breath at the sting of antiseptic cream, the godforsaken, ridiculous, annoying, out of this _universe_ , backward design of band-aid wrappers that _will not_ unroll in his hands and –

– Rodney takes the band-aid from him, rips it open, gives it back. "There."

"Thanks," John says, smoothes it into place above Rodney's eyebrow, stands back and surveys the job. "You'll do."

"Thank you for your expert medical opinion, Colonel," Rodney snips, but his eyes are wide blue and more grateful than the tone of his voice, and John has to swallow the urge to touch him, wrap a hand around his wrist and sink his fingernails into his skin just to anchor himself in something warm and living, pull him up and yank him close to hear the cantankerous beat of his heart.

Instead he nods. "Okay. So – you'll get on that thing with the – " He gestures.

Rodney nods. "Of course." And he shifts his leg, presses his knee against John's calf, holds his gaze and nods his trust the second before he turns back to his computer. He keys his earpiece. "Zelenka? I need to know the output ratios for generators four, five, and six."

And John lets out a breath, rolls his shoulders back, shifts to pick up a laptop himself. He settles behind a console, taps his radio: reports trickle in while his skin stays warm from Rodney's touch, from teamwork, friendship, a scientific faith in impossibility, and a yearning he'll find a way to act on, vocalize, _draw_ if he has to.

Someday.


End file.
